Video Freezing

[Ohnos]

Hey all,

I've got a somewhat minor problem that is bugging me that I was hoping someone here has seen before and could possibly give me some advice. Basically, the problem is that during 3D gaming (Half-Life 2 and Dark Age of Camelot) my video will freeze up occasionally for seconds (1-6 or so) and then come back just fine. The whole game doesn't freeze up as anything I do with the mouse or whatever during the freeze will have occurred when the video comes back. So... that's the problem.

Now I have one other problem with my system that I'm working on fixing, and that is heat. But I'm not sure that it's related, although it might be. My processor climbs to the upper 60's centigrade during these gaming sessions and I feel that is too high. I have no idea how hot my vid card is getting, but I'd imagine that it too could be too hot. I'm going to add some fans and remove the thermal pad on my processor heat sink and replace it with artic silver, this should lower the temp of my processor, but not sure of the vid card, although one fan I'm adding will blow fresh air right on it. The thing is, I'm not sure that an overly hot video card would even cause this. The video comes back without a problem and I'm sure that it doesn't cool off suddenly.

Anyway, the setup is new, but I've been using the video card without a problem since last fall. What is new in the system is the motherboard, processor, memory, power supply, and case. Here's my current system:

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard
Athlon 64 3500+ processor
BGF GeForce 6800GT Video card
Western Digital Raptor 10,000rpm SATA hard drive
2X512 DDR400 Corsair memory
SilverStone Temjin TJ05 case
Antec TruePower 550W power Supply

Any help you can give to shed some light on this problem would be appreciated. Oh, and I'm using the very latest drivers for everything. I have absolutely no problems outside of gaming and this video freeze.

Thanks a bunch.
Ohnos

 

[dragonballgtz]

At what settings are the games running at?

To me it sounds like the game is just running choppy.

And yes the temp is high. Try to get all of the wires out of the way of the air flow.

 

[Ohnos]

The settings are high, very high, lol. 1280X1024 in DAoC and 1024X768 in HL2 with max detail, 4XAA and 8XAnsi for both games. However, I was also running this way with my vid card in my XP 2600+ without the freezes, but it was a different case/mobo/processor. The game is not choppy. It runs smooth as silk for sometimes over an hour, but eventually it will freeze up like I said for seconds at a time. Once this happens, it will usually come back eventually. This is one reason why I suspect heat. The freezes come back sort of randomly, but about at 10 minute intervals on average I'd say.

The wires are out of the way, and they are SATA cables and round IDE. I do have my hard drives in front of the intake fan, I'll move them. I also have a separate fan in the hard drive bay that blows 90 degrees to the intake fan. Perhaps I'm messing up the flow in the case with that. I was going to try moving the fan on the hard drive to the other side where it will blow on the vid card.

 

[meltdown75]

Hi ohnoes

Is there something running in the background? If it is intermittent like you are suggesting that is the first thing I would check. Also try playing with the eye candy such as AA turned down or off - perhaps only certain pressure points in the game(s) are taxing your system enough to chug.

 

[Ohnos]

The only real thing running in the background occasionally would be Firefox. I keep my system tray clean and don't let stuff run that is not needed. Well, I have anti virus running, but that's about it.

I run these same settings on a 2500+ PC with a Asus A7n8x-x mobo and a 6600GT-AGP vid card without these freezes, and I was running the same resolution on an A7N8X-Delux mobo with my XP 2600+ without the freezes. If I don't work on cooling it down this evening, I'll play at lower resolutions or AA and Ansi off and see if that makes a difference, but I'd hate to go down in settings on my best computer when a lesser computer can run them fine. Then again, perhaps it runs cooler without those settings on and that would solve the problem, but it wouldn't be that I was choking it, more that I was overheating it. Guess I should look at heat first, it's just that I didn't expect this kind of response from an overheated vid card.

 

[meltdown75]

I understand what you mean by everything running smooth on a lesser system - I agree that is strange! As far as temps go, when I switched from my plain A7N8X to my A7N8X deluxe, my temps went up about 5C on average. Perhaps it is because I am now using the onboard sound instead of my Audigy Gamer, not sure. But it was puzzling all the same - nothing changed except the mobo (old one got power surged to fubar land).

I guess you'll never know until you throw on some AS5 and see if your temps drop a bit. I can't see it making that much of a difference but you never know. Maybe your hsf is seated less than perfect?

I'd definitely try removing the extra fan you installed in your HD bay though. Generally 1 front intake and 1 rear exhaust is your basic cooling setup. I only have 2 90mm fans but if I had another I might go with the top exhaust or the side intake.

 

[imported_Mitchell]

This should solve your problem.

Go into the BIOS and turn off AGP Fast Writes.

There are problems with Nvidia 6000 series video cards and NF3 motherboards.

Try it and see what happends.

 

[Ohnos]

Well, that's very nice to know. If I still get video freezing problems I'll for sure turn off AGP fast writes, I know that it's on now.

I did manage to lower my temps by 5C both idle and under load. All I had to do was plug my case fans into a normal PS outlet instead of the "fan" outlet that comes with my PS. Helps to read the manual that comes with the PS, lol. But on the other hand, why is it that the PS thinks it can regulate the case fans? It had them running so slow, what's up with that anyway, must be a gimmick.

Anyway, after I test it out for a while I'll let you know what fixes it.

Thanks a bunch!

 

[meltdown75]

Wow, I've never actually seen a PS that offers a little connection just for the fans. I'm assuming it's not from one of the leads via a converter. Pretty cool. Well at least now if you have the fan(s) hooked to your mobo, you can monitor their speed as well.

 

[Ohnos]

Okay, final update... I hope, lol.

The temperatures are actually much cooler now even. Guess the processor was still hot when I took my first readings. Obviously the case cools much much better now as the temperatures come down extremely quickly following a stress test. However, cooling down my case did not help the video freezing problem. So, I did what Mitchell suggested and turned off AGP Fast Writes and low and behold, the problem vanished!

Thank you very much Mitchell! I asked about this all over the place and you were the only one to come up with the answer. Thanks a bunch!